The Young Australian Skeptics is an organisation and group blog run by a diverse team of young science communicators, professionals and students, focused on the crossroads of science with critical thinking, religion, education, politics, medicine, law, wider society and more — in essence, scientific skepticism and its cultural impact.

It’s approaching Christmas time! Or the Holiday Season if you prefer, I guess. Whether or not non-​​​​religious people should celebrate a holiday that has roots in religious traditions is another topic entirely… but I do want to focus on one aspect of Christmas — teaching children about the existence of Santa Claus. Does this activity harm children, in the sense that they may be more open to suggestion about the existence of other non-​​​​existent beings, or does the inevitable realisation that they have been lied to make them more skeptical as adults?

The skeptical community is fighting an uphill battle in spreading the word about science and critical thinking, but why? Could the general public really be that resistant to learning about these topics, or could the issue lie more with the way the skeptical movement is perceived?

Yeah yeah, the existence of a god is controversial. Probably not so much for the majority of the audience of this site, but in a wider social context, it definitely is. Most people with a defined and carefully considered position on this topic, however, tend not to have extremely rigid beliefs — they’re open to the possibility that they’re wrong, meaning that they see a certain chance, however small, that they’re wrong. But will this lack of certainty ever disappear?

Do you think that if we are better at mathematics we are more apt at ignoring our biases and interpreting scientific data effectively? If you did (like me), then you’d probably be wrong (like me). A recent study has shown that…

Every week we ask a question of our audience to stimulate discussion and critical thinking about an issue or topic relating to science, skepticism, technology or religion. Our favourite comments are discussed on this week’s episode of our podcast, The Pseudoscientists!…

It’s no secret times are tough for bookstores in the Digital Age, with many small and even large retailers going out of business, but if there is any justice in the world Embiggen Books will outlive them all. As with reading them,…

First off, as it’s printed on the front of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: DON’T PANIC. It’s okay, this isn’t another politically charged post about who to vote for or a piece on the merits and flaws of political…

We at the Young Australian Skeptics have looked at the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) and their status as Australia’s most prominent anti-​​vaccination organisation before — but let’s have a bit of an update on what the AVN has been up to lately, and what Stop the Australian Vaccination Network (SAVN) has accomplished over the last year or two.